 | The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill |  |
46
SEMELE
What were the garden-bowers of Thebes to me?
What cared I for their dances and their feasts,
Whose heart awaited an immortal doom?
The Greek youths mocked me, since I shunned in scorn
Them and their praises of my brows and hair.
The light girls pointed after me, who turned
Soul-sick from their unending fooleries.
Apollo's noon-glare wrathfully beat down
Upon the head that would not bend to him—
Him in his fuming anger!—as the highest.
In every lily's cup a venomous thing
Crooked up its hairy limbs; or, if I bent
To pluck a blue-eyed blossom in the grass,
Some squatted horror leered with motionless eyes.
What cared I for their dances and their feasts,
Whose heart awaited an immortal doom?
The Greek youths mocked me, since I shunned in scorn
Them and their praises of my brows and hair.
The light girls pointed after me, who turned
Soul-sick from their unending fooleries.
Apollo's noon-glare wrathfully beat down
Upon the head that would not bend to him—
Him in his fuming anger!—as the highest.
In every lily's cup a venomous thing
Crooked up its hairy limbs; or, if I bent
To pluck a blue-eyed blossom in the grass,
Some squatted horror leered with motionless eyes.
I think the very earth did hate my feet,
And put forth thistles to them, since I loathed
Her bare brown bosom; and the scowling pines
Menaced me with dark arms, and hissed their threats
Behind me, hurrying through their gloom, to watch
(Blurred in unsteady tears till all their beams
Dazzled, and shrank, and grew) that oval ring
Of shining points that rift the Milky Way,
Revealing, through their gap in the dusted fire,
The hollow awfulness of night beyond.
There came a change: a glory fell to me.And put forth thistles to them, since I loathed
Her bare brown bosom; and the scowling pines
Menaced me with dark arms, and hissed their threats
Behind me, hurrying through their gloom, to watch
(Blurred in unsteady tears till all their beams
Dazzled, and shrank, and grew) that oval ring
Of shining points that rift the Milky Way,
47
The hollow awfulness of night beyond.
No more 't was Semele, the lonely girl,
But Jupiter's Beloved, Semele.
With human arms the god came clasping me:
New life streamed from his presence; and a voice
That scarce could curb itself to the smooth Greek
Now and anon swept forth in those deep nights,
Thrilling my flesh with awe; mysterious words—
I knew not what; hints of unearthly things
That I had felt on solemn summer noons,
When sleeping earth dreamed music, and the heart
Went crooning a low song it could not learn,
But wandered over it, as one who gropes
For a forgotten chord upon a lyre.
Yea, Jupiter! But why this mortal guise,
Wooing as if he were a milk-faced boy?
Did I lack lovers? Was my beauty dulled,
The golden hair turned dross, the lithe limbs shrunk,
The deathless longings tamed, that I should seethe
My soul in love like any shepherd girl?
One night he sware to grant whate'er I asked;
And straight I cried, “To know thee as thou art!
To hold thee on my heart as Juno does!
48
Divine embrace! Thine oath!—Now, Earth, at last!”
The heavens shot one swift sheet of lurid flame:
The world crashed: from a body scathed and torn
The soul leapt through, and found his breast, and died.
“Died?”—So the Theban maidens think, and laugh,
Saying, “She had her wish, that Semele!”
But sitting here upon Olympus' height
I look down, through that oval ring of stars,
And see the far-off Earth, a twinkling speck—
Dust-mote whirled up from the Sun's chariot-wheel—
And pity their small hearts that hold a man
As if he were a god; or know the god—
Or dare to know him—only as a man!
—O human love, art thou forever blind?
| The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill | |